Israel and the Bomb

On 20 January 1969 Richard M. Nixon succeeded Lyndon B. Johnson as president of the United States. A month later, on 26 February 1969, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol died, and some weeks later Golda Meir was sworn in as Israel’s prime minister. These changes in leadership brought to an end the understandings initiated in the early 1960s by Kennedy and Ben Gurion and modified by Johnson and Eshkol. The new understandings would reflect the political thinking of Nixon and Meir, and the new political and strategic realities.

Under the new understanding, Israel was assumed, but not recognized or acknowledged, to be a nuclear-weapon state. Nixon and Henry Kissinger, if not the entire State Department, accepted the reality that Israel was in possession of nuclear weapons, and Nixon conveyed to Meir that the United States would not challenge this reality or try to roll it back if Israel kept its nuclear profile low. Israel had already won the battle over the Phantom jets—the sale of the F-4s was not linked to Israeli signature of the NPT, and the final features of nuclear opacity were now in place.

The most important result of the new understanding was the end of the American visits to Dimona. One more visit was carried out in 1969, and in 1970 the United States gave them up. The arrangement Kennedy and Eshkol had reached in 1963, an arrangement that brought the United States and Israel to the brink of confrontation, died quietly at the end of the decade.

By July 1970 the Nixon administration relaxed the secrecy surrounding the Israeli nuclear program. The CIA assessment that Israel was a nuclear-weapon state was no longer a matter of “unconfirmed intelligence reports,” but was shared more openly with Congress and even leaked to the media. Israel, without changing its declaratory posture, moved from being an ambiguous nuclear power to an undeclared one.

The NPT was a product of two Democratic administrations which believed that the spread of nuclear weapons to other countries would undermine U.S. and international security. Thus the United States did not distinguish between proliferation to friendly and hostile states, as all proliferation was considered bad. The best way to combat proliferation was by establishing a nonproliferation norm through an international treaty.

This approach was embodied in the Gilpatric Committee report.¹ The report asserted that nuclear weapons capabilities in the hands of any additional countries, “will add complexity and instability to the deterrent balance between the United States and the Soviet Union, [and] aggregate suspicions and hostility among states neighboring new nuclear powers.” In addition, nuclear proliferation would reduce America’s role as a world power: “Our diplomatic and military influence would wane, and strong pressures would arise to retreat to isolation to avoid the risk of involvement in nuclear war.”² The report also called for vigorous measures to discourage further proliferation.³ Such measures required a coordinated effort at the highest political level, multilateral agreements, and a means of affecting the motivations of specific states.⁴

The Gilpatric Committee urged the United States to conclude a multilateral nonproliferation treaty, to exert American influence on other nations concerning nuclear weapons acquisition, and to use U.S. nuclear policies as examples in arms control and weapons policies. The report suggested that the cause of nonproliferation deserved precedence over NATO nuclear arrangements.⁵ It took Johnson two years to adopt the Gilpatric Committee’s recommendations. His administration, then, had led the campaign to conclude the NPT.

Nixon’s view on nuclear proliferation was different. Republicans tend to be suspicious of universalistic plans and organizations, and the new Republican administration was less than enthusiastic about the effectiveness and desirability of the NPT. The pursuit of a more narrowly defined U.S. interest led the Nixon administration to distinguish between proliferation to hostile or to friendly states. As early as his presidential campaign in 1968, Nixon criticized the NPT for not permitting the transfer of “defensive nuclear weapons.”⁶ After the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, Nixon spoke against the ratification of the NPT as long as Soviet troops were stationed on Czech soil.

The Treaty required that forty-three nations, including the three depositors, must ratify it in order for it to take effect. By late November 1968 about seventy nations had signed the Treaty, but only the United Kingdom, Ireland, Nigeria, and Mexico had ratified it. The momentum for signing the NPT had slowed down because of the Soviet invasion and the American decision to hold off ratification, and because more states were taking a wait-and-see attitude toward ratifying it.

On 5 February 1969, two weeks after his inauguration, Nixon resubmitted the NPT to Congress for ratification. He condemned the Soviet invasion but stressed that it was “time to move forward.” He expressed support for the NPT, saying that the United States would urge other nations, including Germany and France, to sign it. The same day, however, National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger circulated a secret National Security Decision Memorandum to the bureaucracy that qualified the administration’s public support of the NPT:

This accorded with Kissinger’s view that eventually most regional powers would acquire nuclear weapons. The United States could benefit more by quietly assisting friendly nations than by getting involved in a futile exercise in nonproliferation.⁸ Among the states Kissinger apparently had in mind were Japan, India, and Israel, as nuclear weapons were essential to the national security of these states. It would be better for the United States and its allies if the three states had their own nuclear deterrent instead of relying on an American nuclear umbrella. Kissinger appeared to be saying that if he were an Israeli, he would get nuclear weapons, and that the United States should not try to talk Israel out of it.⁹

Israeli leaders were aware that Nixon and Kissinger viewed the NPT, Israel’s security, and the Phantoms deal differently than their predecessors did. Ambassador Yitzhak Rabin sensed that a Republican administration was likely to be more sympathetic to Israel’s security needs, including their nuclear capabilities, than the Johnson administration. During Nixon’s visit to the Golan Heights in 1967, shortly after the war, Nixon made the point that had he been an Israeli leader he would not have withdrawn from the Heights.

Rabin met Nixon in early August 1968 and received American pledges on the Phantoms and on “the need to keep Israel strong.”¹⁰ Weeks later Nixon repeated his pledge publicly in an appearance before a Jewish audience. By then Rabin was convinced that Nixon would be “a good president for our cause, even more than Israel’s old friend, Hubert Humphrey.”¹¹ This recognition influenced Rabin’s resistance to pressure from Dean Rusk and Paul Warnke on the NPT in September and November. Israel was pushing to finalize negotiations over the Phantoms while continuing to hold off its reply on the NPT.

In mid-November, days after Nixon’s electoral victory and after the Johnson White House instructed Warnke to end quickly the negotiations on the F-4s, Israel informed the State Department of its objections to the Treaty. Israel took the formal position that it was still considering and studying the Treaty, but informed the United States that it saw substantial deficiencies in the NPT relating to its security. As long as these problems remained, Israel could not sign the Treaty. The Israeli reservations were leaked to the press with great accuracy.¹² By late November a CIA memorandum on the prospects of the NPT made the assessment that “so long as conditions in the Middle East do not improve, there is little likelihood of a change in [Israel’s] position.”¹³

Israel raised three requirements with American officials that kept it from signing the NPT at that time: Israel must have an agreement with the United States that would guarantee an American supply of conventional military hardware; Israel must obtain security guarantees from the United States against aggression by a nuclear-weapon state, that is, the Soviet Union; and there must be a link between Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories and regional peace. Israel also noted that by signing the NPT and renouncing the nuclear option it “would forsake a useful psychological deterrent in keeping the Arab states uncertain about her progress toward becoming a nuclear power.”¹⁴ Israel thus conveyed to the United States its determination not to give up acquiring nuclear weapons for anything less than a meaningful security guarantee. Nor would it allow the nuclear weapons question to be isolated from other security issues, and until these issues were addressed satisfactorily, Israel would not sign the NPT. As long as the United States dealt with Israel’s armament needs on a case-by-case basis, as was the situation with the F-4s, Israel would have to maintain its nuclear-weapons option.

The novel part of the Israeli position concerned Soviet aggression against Israel. This was the first time Israeli officials acknowledged that “the hostile Soviet attitude towards Israel” was a factor in Israel’s reluctance to sign the NPT. Unlike other advanced states, such as West Germany and Italy, Israel had no formal security commitment from the United States to protect it from nuclear blackmail or attack.¹⁵ Israel was not the only country to raise reservations about the effectiveness of the security assurances attached to the NPT. These assurances were based on the UN Security Council as the implementing mechanism, and a number of nations pointed out that any proposed Security Council action could be thwarted by a permanent member’s veto.¹⁶

The Israeli reply changed the American-Israeli understanding on nuclear issues that had evolved in the 1960s. In effect, Israel acknowledged that the Dimona reactor was related to the nation’s security, and should be so considered. This raised Israel’s price for signing the NPT considerably, as the three conditions Israel made for joining the treaty were tantamount to a military and political alliance between the United States and Israel.

The breadth and scope of the security issues Israel raised made it doubtful that the Nixon administration, or any other administration, would be willing to pay Israel’s price. It is also doubtful that Israel had any real expectation of actually obtaining American security guarantees in exchange for signing the NPT. Rather, it was a way of telling the administration that Israel’s interests did not allow it to sign the NPT. Israel had grounds to believe that its objections to the NPT would be acceptable to the new administration.¹⁷

In mid-December Foreign Minister Abba Eban told the Knesset that the government still had not reached a final decision on the NPT and he could not predict when this would happen.¹⁸ Israel still referred to the matter of the NPT as being “under review,” but it was obvious that Israel had no intention of signing it anytime soon, hoping to reach new understandings with the Nixon administration that would remove the issue from their mutual agendas. New information on the increasing Soviet involvement in Egypt added another dimension to the nuclear issue, strengthening the Israeli arguments against signing the NPT.

In late December Rabin met with Kissinger, shortly after he had been named Nixon’s national security adviser. According to Rabin, Kissinger avoided making commitments, but some of his phrases eased the ambassador’s concerns. For example, he stated that the United States would be receptive to Israeli requests for weapons, and “that the Republican administration would be more relaxed on the nuclear issue.”¹⁹

In early January 1969, days before Nixon took office, the Israeli nuclear program was back in the headlines. NBC News reported that Israel either had a nuclear weapon or would soon have one. According to the report, this was the result of a decision that had been made two years earlier “to embark on a crash program to produce a nuclear weapon.”²⁰ Was this report the first indication that the Eshkol government had decided to leak to the world, and the Nixon administration, new facts about Israel’s nuclear program? Was the leak a continuation of the effort Dayan initiated in his meeting with president-elect Nixon? Was it a typical unauthorized effort by Dayan to establish “facts on the ground” in the last days of the Johnson and Eshkol governments? (Eshkol’s terminal illness, which had been kept secret from the public, made him incapable of governing in the last six months of his life.)

In any case, the NBC story was dismissed by officials in Jerusalem and Washington. In Jerusalem, “authoritative sources” called the story “speculative and inaccurate,” reiterating the old formulas: Israel was not a nuclear-weapon state, was committed “not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the region,” and was still “studying” the NPT.²¹ In a New York Times story written by John W. Finney, the reporter who had covered the Dimona visits since 1964, officials of the departing Johnson administration also expressed doubts about the NBC story. They acknowledged that Israel had already acquired a threshold capability of becoming a nuclear power, but added that so far as the United States knew, Israel had not produced a nuclear weapon. They made it clear that they “do not believe that the Israeli government which over the years has emphasized that it would not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East has made a decision to build a nuclear weapon.”²² The administration thus presented the change in Israel as a technological drift, not as a matter of a new political decision, adding:

Regarding the reprocessing plant, Finney wrote:

By 1969 it became clear that the American visits to Dimona hindered a new American-Israeli nuclear understanding. For Israel to acquire the status of an opaque nuclear power, the Dimona visits must be stopped.

It took nine more months for Nixon and Meir to reach a new nuclear understanding. In the meantime, the State Department bureaucracy continued with a business-as-usual approach. On 7 March 1969 Assistant Secretary of State Joseph Sisco wrote a two-page “action memorandum” for the new secretary of state, William Rogers, briefing him on the history and significance of the American visits to Dimona. Rogers was asked to authorize Ambassador Walworth Barbour to prepare for the next American visit.²⁵ In 1969 Barbour apparently knew, or at least intuited, what Rogers, Sisco, and the State Department (its Bureau of Intelligence and Research [INR]) did not know, that is, the findings of those visits did not reflect reality. Barbour and the Tel Aviv CIA station chief had already guessed the truth, but the information was too sensitive—it had too many implications—to be accepted by the State Department in Washington.²⁶

In his memo Sisco outlined the background of the American visits to Dimona, mentioning that since May 1961 the United States had conducted “seven inspections of the [Dimona] facility”—the memo used the words “inspection” and “visit” interchangeably—the last one taking place in June 1968. “Our understanding with the GOI [Government of Israel] is that the visits will be conducted without publicity, but that we will be free to convey the results of our inspections to other governments of our choice.”²⁷

Sisco’s memo noted that the Israelis had always insisted on maintaining visits at least a year apart, “citing domestic political difficulties.” The Israeli ground rules—“one-day visits on the basis of one-year periodicity”—had been “minimally sufficient to give us reasonable confidence that Israel is not engaged in weapons-related activity at this site.” The State Department had been concerned that Israel could try to take advantage of its upcoming election in November to postpone the visit, just as it had done in 1965; however, an interval of eighteen months between visits would be “too long a period, in the opinion of our experts.”²⁸ To prevent such a delay, the department proposed that Barbour should start to initiate the visit early.

Notwithstanding the deficiencies of the American visits to Dimona, there were growing suspicions that Israel might have other nuclear weapon–related facilities. Since around 1966 the American intelligence community was of the opinion that the real weapons work might take place not in Dimona but “somewhere else in Israel.” Sisco’s memorandum expressed this suspicion:

Rogers, who had just been briefed about the Dimona arrangement, accepted Sisco’s proposal. A day later he signed a telegram sent to Barbour, instructing him to initiate contacts with the Israelis for the next Dimona visit. Among his instructions, Barbour was to request a two-day visit, and he was reminded that on the last visit the visiting team claimed that it was “being rushed to cover everything at [the] site in twelve hours.”³⁰ Barbour needed no such reminder. He had been in Israel since the first visit in May 1961, negotiating the details of the arrangements with both Ben Gurion and Eshkol.

Two weeks later Barbour reported to the State Department that he had started the process of setting up the visit.³¹ A few days later he wrote that his Israeli interlocutor was agreeable to a visit in principle, but opposed any changes from the past, insisting on keeping the one-year interval and the one-day duration.³² Accordingly, he suggested two Saturdays near the end of the one-year period, 29 June or 5 July, assuring Barbour that election considerations would not interfere with scheduling the visit.³³ The State Department’s reaction to the Israeli dates did not differ from that of earlier years: the “one-year period” condition was portrayed as a violation of the original 1963 Kennedy-Eshkol agreement. Barbour was instructed to reopen the issue with the Israelis.³⁴

The State Department’s characterization of the agreement between Kennedy and Eshkol was not accurate. Kennedy had asked for two visits per year to Dimona, but Eshkol’s 19 August 1963 response had been deliberately vague. Since 1964 Israel had indicated that it would not permit the visits to be less than one year apart. The Johnson administration had learned to live with the Israeli conditions, and Barbour knew more about this than anybody else. In his reply to the State Department, he was not hopeful about any changes in the terms of the visits and told Washington that “the present assurances are the best we can expect.” He reminded Rogers that, despite Eshkol’s 1963 letter to Kennedy and his accompanying comments to him, Eshkol never carried out that commitment.³⁵ In a subsequent cable Barbour told Washington that in his judgment there was no chance Israel would agree to open the question of the frequency of visits.³⁶ After a few more rounds of correspondence, resolving scheduling problems regarding Amos de Shalit—the official host for the visits—the date was set for Saturday, 12 July 1969.³⁷

Setting the date, however, did not end the disagreement between the United States and Israel over the ground rules. To offset the disadvantages of the one-day visit, the State Department proposed having a four-man team that could be divided into two teams, “so as much ground could be covered as thoroughly as possible,”³⁸ but Israel again told Barbour that it opposed any departure from past practice.³⁹ Again, the United States had to comply with the Israeli conditions—no more than three members on a team—if it wanted a visit. In addition, the team was not allowed to bring its own measurement instruments or to collect samples of any kind. Barbour, almost as a matter of ritual, was asked to pass on America’s irritation with those restrictions.⁴⁰

The one-day visit took place on schedule on Saturday, 12 July 1969. The team consisted of George B. Pleat, AEC assistant director for reactor products, along with Edwin Kintner of the AEC and Edward L. Nicholson of Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). This was Pleat’s third visit to Dimona, for the first time replacing Floyd Culler as team leader, and Kintner’s second visit. Both men were familiar with the site and with their hosts, Amos de Shalit of the Weizmann Institute and Yossef Tulipman, Dimona’s director-general. As had been the case in previous years, Pleat and his team received background briefings by the State Department and the CIA.⁴¹ The CIA did not share with the AEC scientists its estimates regarding Israeli nuclear weapons—to have done so would have compromised the agency’s sources,⁴² and would have revealed the procedures of the previous seven years as a sham.⁴³ The members of the team were disappointed by their CIA briefer’s lack of knowledge.⁴⁴

The visit turned out to be a long one—eighteen hours—the longest inspection to be conducted. The American team arrived at the Dimona site early in the morning and left close to midnight. The Israelis spent most of the morning and afternoon hours hosting their guests in their labs, introducing them to their scientific projects. Just as the Israelis seemed eager to talk about their own research, they wanted to hear from their guests about scientific projects and programs undertaken at ORNL and elsewhere in the United States. The Pleat team, however, treated its real job as an inspection, not a scientific exchange. The Israeli approach was a misuse of their limited time. Pleat believed then and now that it might have been a deliberate effort by the Israelis to wear the team down before they started their inspection and to shorten their inspection time.⁴⁵ Pleat, like Culler, notes that his team’s objective, like that of previous teams, was to inspect the reactor—to count materials and compare logs—and to look for indications of a reprocessing plant or capability. Because of the distractions, the team had to continue its inspection efforts well into the late night hours. The team left the Dimona facility with a sense of frustration and anger.⁴⁶

Again, the secrets of Dimona were not revealed. The Pleat team did not find a reprocessing plant or evidence of its existence. Nor were signs of high-level waste systems found.⁴⁷ Kintner, who was as rigorous as possible (under the circumstances) in the conduct of his inspection activities, left the site still believing it was unlikely that a reprocessing plant could be hidden on the site.⁴⁸ The American suspicions and frustrations over what was going on in Dimona grew considerably, however.⁴⁹ In previous years the Culler team had already expressed its frustration with the circumstances surrounding its visits. The 1969 experience intensified that feeling. Pleat and his team expressed that frustration and sense of futility in the team report, written during a two-night stopover in Rome.⁵⁰

By the end of July Ambassador Barbour officially complained to Prime Minister Meir about the way the visit had been conducted, and in particular the way the Israelis obstructed the team from fulfilling its mission. In a follow-up discussion of the 1969 Dimona visit at the State Department, with Pleat and AEC director of intelligence Charles Reichardt present, the reasons for the fiasco were analyzed. A critical issue was the way the team understood its mandate and the support it had from the U.S. government to fulfill this mandate:

The State Department note taker ended the memo by commenting that “visits conducted under these approaches, may even be counter-productive.” He also noted that the United States could make the visits more meaningful by instructing the teams “to take a positive approach to inspection, asking for all the access and information they deem required, and leaving it to the Israelis either to accede or make positive denials of what is requested.” “At the least,” he concluded, “that course would place responsibility where it must rest rather than avoiding the real issues in a manner which prejudices our interests.”⁵³

The contentious exchange between the State Department and the Israeli government regarding the 1969 Dimona visit highlighted the widening gap between the Department of State, on the one hand, and the White House and the CIA, on the other. Both the White House and the CIA recognized that Israel had already crossed the nuclear weapons threshold.⁵⁴ Nixon’s secretary of state, William Rogers, and his senior Middle East advisers were not told of this recognition.

Days after the Dimona visit, Undersecretary of State Elliot Richardson asked Israel for an answer on the NPT. The response he was given was no different from what Israel had said before—the NPT was still “under study” and the Israeli government could not commit itself as to when that study would be completed or the policy it would adopt once the study was completed.⁵⁵ The State Department was not ready to accept the Israeli answer. On 29 July, Acting Secretary Richardson and his counterpart from the Pentagon, Deputy Secretary David Packard, invited Rabin to discuss Israel’s nuclear and missile programs. According to the “talking point” memo that Sisco prepared for Richardson, the meeting aimed “to initiate a dialogue on Israel’s intentions concerning nuclear weapons and strategic missiles.” Given the previous administration’s failure eight months earlier to get Israeli signature on the NPT in exchange for the F4s, Richardson’s objectives were ambitious. As stated in Sisco’s memo, these objectives were that Israel do the following: (a) sign the NPT by the end of the year; (b) reaffirm to the U.S. in writing that it will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Near East, specifying that “introduction” shall mean possession of nuclear explosive devices; and (c) give us assurances in writing that it will stop production and will not deploy “Jericho” missiles or any other nuclear-capable missile.⁵⁶

The talking points Sisco prepared for Richardson were similar to the message Rusk and Warnke had given Eban and Rabin in October–November 1968. Both deputy secretaries were to make the case for the importance the United States attached to Israel signature of the NPT. They were asked to tell Rabin straight out that the issue of Israel’s nuclear policy “transcends considerations of purely bilateral significance,” and with the NPT in existence, “unilateral assurances are no longer sufficient in themselves to give confidence that Israel does not intend to manufacture nuclear weapons.” Because of the Israeli nuclear potential the United States was “particularly troubled” by Israel’s continued delay in signing the NPT:

Richardson was asked to note Eshkol’s letter to President Johnson from December, in which Eshkol stated that Israel was studying the NPT. In case Rabin contended that Israel had not yet completed its deliberations regarding the NPT, Richardson was urged to ask what aspect of the NPT created special problems for Israel, and that the United States would be happy to discuss these issues with Israeli experts.

Sisco’s memo to Richardson also referred to the difference that became apparent in the Rabin-Warnke talks in November “over what constitutes introduction of nuclear weapons.” Referring to Rabin’s point that a state might possess a nuclear explosive device but as long as it was undeclared and untested it could not be considered as having been “introduced,” the memo urged Richardson to reject this definition of introduction. Sisco wrote that the United States must make it clear to Israel that it cannot accept this interpretation of introduction. “We would like to have Israel’s assurance that when it says it will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the area it means that it will not possess nuclear weapons.” The memo also made a reference to the Jericho missile (MD-620), the missile that was developed and tested by the French government. Those weapons “make sense only as a nuclear weapons carrier.” It urged Israel not to produce or deploy these missiles.

The record of that conversation is still unavailable, but Rabin described the meeting in his memoirs. According to Rabin, the two under-secretaries “showed a great deal of curiosity.” They insisted on knowing what Israel meant by its nonintroduction commitment. Did Israel have the capacity to produce such weapons, but was avoiding producing them?⁵⁸

Richardson was exploring with Rabin the same issues Warnke had explored with Rabin in November: What was the operational meaning of the Israeli pledge not to introduce nuclear weapons into the region? To what had Israel actually committed itself? These questions were aimed at understanding what the Israeli threshold was—how far would Israel go in its nuclear pursuit? Might the Israeli threshold be based on a distinction between the technical capacity to produce nuclear weapons and the political decision to do so? Richardson probed. From Rabin’s description, Richardson clearly wanted him to acknowledge that Israel had the technical capacity to produce nuclear weapons, but had not made the decision to do so, that is, nonintroduction meant nonpossession. This distinction was implicit in de Shalit’s comment in June 1967 and in Eshkol’s statement of October 1968. The State Department thought that this distinction could still permit Israel to sign the NPT.

Rabin followed the path he had taken in November 1968 during his negotiations with Warnke on the Phantoms: nonintroduction meant nontesting. The United States wanted Israel to commit itself not to produce nuclear weapons, but Rabin was willing to pledge only that Israel would not test such weapons. Rabin also stated that as long as there was no test, there was no complete weapons system. The second interpretation was consistent with the notion that as long as Israel did not turn the last screw to make the device an operational weapon system, it had not introduced nuclear weapons into the region.⁵⁹

Regarding the NPT, Rabin proposed separating the question of the meaning of nonintroduction and Israel signing the NPT. He told Richardson that Meir, who had been on the job for only a few months, was preoccupied with the skirmishes along the Suez Canal and had not had a chance to study this issue. Rabin proposed leaving the question of the NPT for the upcoming discussions with Nixon during her visit to the United States.⁶⁰

Since the mid-1960s some senior CIA officials had concluded that the Israeli nuclear project was unstoppable, and that the Dimona inspectors had been led to false conclusions by the Israelis. By late 1966 the CIA station in Tel Aviv passed on two reports claiming that Israel had completed the development stage of its bomb project and was weeks away from the bomb. The alarmist reports were received with suspicion at the bureau of intelligence and research of the State Department; in the absence of solid confirmation they did not change the assessment of the department. Ambassador Barbour, who was aware of the reports and recognized their credibility, concluded that the AEC Dimona visits were becoming embarrassing for both countries, and that it would be better to end them. While Barbour officially protested to Prime Minister Meir about the Israeli conduct during the 1969 visit, unofficially he lobbied to discontinue the arrangement.⁶¹

The meeting between Nixon and Meir was the right moment to bring about the needed change. Nixon and Kissinger accepted exceptions to the principle of nonproliferation, and believed that this might be a case where the U.S. national interest permitted a state friendly to the United States to build its own nuclear arsenal.

There was also a change in the Israeli approach to the problem. Golda Meir saw things differently from Ben Gurion and Eshkol, and was not locked into the understandings her predecessors reached with Kennedy and Johnson. In late September 1969 she had her chance to present her view to American leaders.⁶² In her memoirs Meir does not discuss the substance of her conversation with Nixon, saying only that “I could not quote him then, and I will not quote him now.” In his memoirs Rabin was more forthcoming, saying that the discussions were sensitive. Even in the meetings that included Kissinger, Rogers, and himself, no protocol was taken. The understandings reached were not written and formal.⁶³

Some of the understandings were on issues of procedure and communication. Nixon and Meir decided to set up direct channels of communication between their offices, bypassing their foreign policy bureaucracies. The most sensitive, substantive understanding concerned the nuclear issue. Meir followed her old line: “to tell the Americans the truth and to explain why.” Nixon and Kissinger understood why.

It was apparently in those discussions that it was agreed to end the American visits to Dimona, putting an end to an affair that had become both embarrassing and not at all useful. From now on the United States would no longer press Israel to sign the NPT, but it would continue to support the principle of the universality of the NPT. The United States would publicly continue to express its interest in Israel signing the NPT and placing all its nuclear installations under safeguards. Israel, for its part, continued to be committed to the Eshkol formula of nonintroduction along the lines Rabin had suggested in his previous meetings: no test, no declaration, hence, no introduction. Rabin referred to these understandings obliquely, “the Nixon Administration no longer pressed on the matter of signing the NPT, and the issue dropped from the [bilateral] agenda.”⁶⁴ Two decades later an American official searched governmental archives to understand how exactly, and by whose authority, the AEC visits to Dimona came to an end. He found no paper trail showing a formal directive to that extent.⁶⁵

The new understandings of 1969 dealt with the new nuclear reality in the Middle East. During Eshkol’s tenure, Israeli commitment appeared to mean that Israel would not produce nuclear weapons. After 1969 Israel committed itself not to reveal its nuclear capability by conducting a test or by declaration.⁶⁶ With these new understandings both the United States and Israel moved from the era of nuclear ambiguity to the era of nuclear opacity.

On 18 July 1970, when the Soviet military involvement in the War of Attrition reached its peak, the New York Times made public Israel’s status as a de facto nuclear-weapon state. The paper’s diplomatic correspondent, Hedrick Smith, wrote that “for at least two years the United States Government has been conducting its Middle East policy on the assumption that Israel either possesses an atomic bomb or has component parts available for quick assembly.”⁶⁷ The story was prompted by the comments of Senator Stuart Symington, a member of the Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees, made in the wake of “a somber appraisal” of the Israeli nuclear program given to the committee by Richard Helms, director of Central Intelligence, on 7 July.⁶⁸ It was apparently the first time the CIA shared its information on Israel’s nuclear status with Congress.

The New York Times story made public most of what the U.S. government knew about the Israeli nuclear program. It stressed that while there were disputes within the intelligence community about narrow technical details concerning the Israeli operational status, there was a consensus that “Israel has the capacity to assemble atomic bombs on short notice” if it had not already done so. Without referring to the talks between Nixon and Meir, Smith disclosed that Israel had told American officials that the commitment not to introduce nuclear weapons meant that Israel would not be the first Middle Eastern state to use or test atomic arms. The Nixon administration was convinced that Israel would not use nuclear weapons except in the most dire emergency.⁶⁹

Smith noted that the sensitivity of the information was so great that the CIA had not put it in a “fully coordinated national intelligence estimate.” The administration treated the matter separately from other Middle East issues and did not expect to incorporate the nuclear issue into its current diplomacy. American officials were reluctant to discuss the matter because of its explosive implications for the Arab countries and the Soviet Union, as well for the United States and Israel.⁷⁰

We do not know who leaked the information to the New York Times. It is clear, however, that Symington, other senators, and some individuals in the administration wanted the message to be made public. Was the purpose of the disclosure to signal to the Soviet Union that a cease-fire agreement in the War of Attrition must be reached to prevent further Soviet-Israeli escalation? Was it a way to explain to the American public why the United States ought to be concerned about the dangerous situation along the Suez Canal?

The Israeli response to the disclosure was different than in the past. Israel did not deny the story, stating instead that it was “inaccurate, unauthoritative and speculative,” repeating the pledge not to be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East.⁷¹ The New York Times noted, however, the nuance in the new Israeli disclaimer: “Responsible Israel officials [in Washington] are said to have told United States officials that this [the disclaimer] means Israel would not be the first Middle Eastern country to test or use atomic weapons.”⁷² The State Department responded to the story in a similar way, stressing its speculative nature and saying that the United States continued to trust the Israeli commitment not to be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the region.⁷³

The New York Times article signified the beginning of a new era in the public history of the Israeli nuclear weapons program. It revealed what had been known by some for at least two years—Israel was a nuclear-weapon state and should be treated as such. It took a few more years for this recognition to be absorbed into the new thinking about Israel’s nuclear capability. The move from nuclear ambiguity to opacity was now complete.